“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” – Ecclesiastes 3:11
As another year draws to a close, one can hardly help but think, “Where has the year gone?” Time overtakes us with ease. Minutes turn into hours, hours into days, and days become months. Before we realize it, we’ve left a trail of years behind. And what of it all? A certain wistfulness falls whenever we reflect on the time that’s gone by. We wonder if the life we’ve lived so far has been meaningful. Our thoughts drift to the “what-ifs” and the “if-onlys” dotting our past. What will the future hold?
That bittersweetness we feel evidences the longing for eternity God has set in our hearts. Though we are yet finite, we ache for infinity — that time could no longer condemn our past or constrain our future. We desire to live perpetually in the present free of regret or worry. Can this be possible?
Ask God, the master of time. He knows the beginning and the end. Only He can satisfy the deep longing He himself placed in us. Will you trust Him to meet your need for eternity?
Good thoughts. May we shed some of our “what-ifs” during the coming year and ask God “what next?”
Shalom
Very true, Jeanne. Not “what-if” but “what next”?